


Junkie

by LaDolceMia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Because Lynn said please write me any kind of happy Johnlock cos I've been at the angstfic again, But I suspect the results in your case will be appreciably more pleasant, But no one ever seems to recognize a Bartok reference, Curiosity killed the cat John, It's a drugs bust oi!, M/M, My headcanon Sherlock plays a lot of Bartok actually, Pre-Slash, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaDolceMia/pseuds/LaDolceMia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><br/>John finds Sherlock's stash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Junkie

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for a bit of swearing, though I'm sure the kids these days get up to much worse, expletive-wise. O tempora, o mores.

There are only so many things a human being can be expected to endure. And apparently fate's decided that John Hamish Watson is just the bloke to have the whole lot tested out on.

Which is fine, really. It's all fine. He'll saintly suffer felonious assault of plaster and depraved indifference to dishwear, 3 a.m. Paganini and round-the-clock Variations in C Minor of Bored, John, _Bored_ , and even whatever that was bubbling and congealing in the bathtub yesterday, but this? This is a bridge too far. There are some things you simply don't do to a man, and one of those is deprive him of his bloody _socks_.

Some vague explanation about their wool to acrylic ratio being the perfect straining medium - and god knows he didn't want to hear for exactly _what_ \- were all he got in return for the spectacular ruination of six very fine pairs over the course of the week, and now it's Friday and it's chilly and bugger the imperious twat, he's going to borrow a pair of his.

He hesitates just a moment in the vaguely accusatory silence of the bedroom, fingers on the drawer knob, mind on the morals. But sod privacy- he needs socks, and it's Sherock's fault he hasn't any, and what's he supposed to do, go to the surgery without?

A smooth tug, and the Sock Index presents itself in all its obsessive compulsive glory. He hovers, wondering about the taxonomy– he wants the best ones, the very best Sherlock's got. Cashmere, preferably. To sweat in. Relentlessly. And then tuck back in here unwashed.

Lips pursed 'round a softly wicked hum of approval at said plan, he shoves in, fingers groping for a likely looking pair in the back. It's the work of less than .00003 seconds – oh, aren't somatosensory neurons just _grand_? – for his entire world to implode like a crushed pop can. Heart dropping cut-elevator swiftly, arrow of bile a straight line of fire up his throat.

 _Please no_.

It's corner he's gotten, the square edge. If he'd bumped against the flat of the damn thing, he might've mistaken it for simply the back of the drawer instead of instantly recognizing it as a box. Gone about his day. Enjoyed a nice breakfast. _Not_ had five or ten years knocked off his life expectancy in one fell blow of stress.

He doesn't want to look, can't stand to. Has to. Because why else would Sherlock have a little wooden case hidden in his dresser? _Fuck_. Damn it. Damn _him_.

Fury crowds out the tears that threaten and he reaches, grasps it with a touch of palpable disdain. It's all he can do not to hurl it to the floor.

He wants Sherlock here now, _now_. Wants to throw the damn thing square at him with some useless, nonsensical exclamation like _Why_ or _How could you_ or simply every brilliantly obscene execration he'd heard squaddies invent in that great crucible of creativity, mortal peril.

How long? He wants to know, doesn't want to know. He's entirely missed the signs, and isn't that just a charming soupçon of salt in the wound? The decorated doctor, blind to drug shooting going on right in his own flat.

That thought, or perhaps just the white buzzing in his head, has him off balance, stumbling a bit against the rug as he strides down the hall, the distance far too short for him to spend off the pent adrenalized energy.

It's hardly the living room's fault that it's quiet and cozy, but that doesn't stop him from glaring at it as though he wants to punch it. Makes for downstairs, wants to be _right there_ , at the front door the moment Sherlock- oh. Mrs Hudson. So up here it is. 

Shoves the detritus from the coffee table onto the floor without a glance, slams the box down in the center. Right where he'll see it as soon as he steps in. The gritted _bastard_ is more a pained choke than a word as he turns away, presses his fingers hard against his eyes.

Anger's a lot of things, and one of them is _tiring_. Drained, he drops into his chair with a sigh, feeling as hard wrung out as a dishrag. It's not the swallowed bile that's got his stomach sour and hurting.

 _Idiot_. Hurting himself just to stave off boredom, for fuck's sake. And John's failed to keep him out of trouble, and maybe no one can- perhaps the great man's never going to be a good man, just a dead man, just a goddamn overdosed corpse for John to find one of these days when he comes home with the shopping.

Which would all be quite enough, thanks, but he realizes with a start that he also feels- abandoned somehow. Doesn't make a bit of sense. Like Sherlock's... left him for the cocaine. Which wouldn't make much more sense even if they actually were a– couple.

And just where in the bloody hell did that word come from, mate?

He should– open a window, maybe. Take some air, clear his head, something. The stress is obviously doing untoward things to his mind.

What he shouldn't do is open the box. That's masochism. He doesn't want to have to actually look at the needle. But the box should be open. Should be tipped out onto the table, point of fact. Strewn right out, the loud and ugly visual accusation Sherlock deserves.

The locking mechanism is no match for dextrous hands gone to rage, and it snaps easily open between his fingers with a complaining crunch. The inlaid lid lifts silently and the interior is–

It's– confusing, is what. He stares at the aubergine velvet lining, blinks once, twice. A tangled tide of relief beginning to lap over the anger, but mostly puzzlement: There's no needle. No vial. Not even an emergency fag or two. It's just rubbish - a crumpled bit of paper, some lint, a bit of what looks like a stray hair. Why would Sherlock keep sweepings in a locked box? Carefully hidden in his dresser?

Cortisol-poisoned muscles shake a little with rubbery relief and he breathes, tries to settle his nerves. Brisk scrub of one hand over his face and a rueful headshake buy him a little calm, and he stands, only a bit wobbly. Tea'd be the thing. Already half-turned toward the kitchen, he reaches back, thinking to return the box en route. Glances down curiously at the bit of paper- surely there's no harm?

Blank, the side he gets, and when he flips it over, might as well be for all the informative it is - it's just a little restaurant receipt. Why would Sherlock even have it in the first place? It must've–

Oh. _Oh_. 

The timestamp. Even sideways, his own birthdate catches his eye.

That night, Sherlock hadn't objected to the candle Angelo brought over. And had he– blushed under the restauranteur’s meaningful gaze at the two of them? He couldn't have. Holmeses don't _blush_. Bred out of their genome generations ago. At the time, John had chalked it up to the extra bit of wine Sherlock'd uncharacteristically downed.

He was surprised enough that he'd remembered his birthday, much less that he was taking him out for it (Sorry, again please- we're doing _what_?), but his explanation was so... _Sherlockian_ \- if John felt neglected on his birthday his dopamine levels would drop, which could lead to depression, making him less useful to Sherlock, ergo they are at engaging in the banal social convention of arbitrary annual celebrations of the thoroughly unimpressive event of simply being born - that it hadn't even occurred to him that it was anything other than a scrupulously impersonal perfunctory chore. But. Here's the tab from that night. In what is starting to look undeniably like a _keepsake box_ , for christ's sake–

He needs the chair.

Steady on, Watson. He breathes. Ransacks his wobbling brain for some explanation, any explanation other than the obvious one. None are forthcoming. The receipt rustles unhelpfully in his suddenly damp grip.

Right. Well. Maybe this adds up to something logical in toto. The other bits, they'll explain this. They'll explain this away and then he can slip the box back into its hiding place and never mention it and everything will be normal and not– this frightening, thrilling, breath-hitching swirl.

The giggle isn't a good sign. Too edged with hysteria. Fortunately, the lint explains everything. Because a receipt + lint = classic forgotten pocket contents. It's just pocket leavings that somehow... got misplaced. Yes. Misfiled, as it were. Sherlock's half a nutter on his best days, prone to flailing and flouncing and haphazard shoving - hadn't John once found a biro and notepad in the freezer? - and not paying a bit of attention to Things That Are Beneath His Notice. Which is largely everything and surely trash would be at the very bottom of that list, so. They simply got tossed into this little box somehow instead of into the bin. There then. Mystery solved.

Except it isn't lint.

Small and frayed, but plainly not random fuzz. It's a proper piece of wool, that's come clear as he nudges the tiny balled up mass with his fingertip, and he doesn't like where this is going, can feel his brain whirring, knows it's going to produce something that's going to complicate his life, such as the recognition of the bit of lint that isn't lint, that is, in point of ( _horrid, startling {brilliant, fantastic}_ ) fact, a little snag from his own jumper and so much for memory inexorably declining past age 28, because it's no time at all from there to remembering which one and how it got torn.

That night up at Lanconshire flits vividly behind his closed eyelids as he rubs the fabric absently: The fog, mildly sweet on his tongue when he'd opened his mouth to steal a deep breath; the field washed pale in the generous light of a fat moon as they hurried through the pasture. The fence. The wooden fence tearing his sleeve and giving him a right vicious scratch as he'd clambered over, and Sherlock– Sherlock actually stopping, turning back to- he never turns 'round to check on John whilst he's striding lead.

Except he had, then. 

He hadn't said anything terribly _pedestrian_ like "Be careful," or done anything inconceivably _ordinary_ like reach a hand out to offer help. He'd simply stopped, turned around, paused. But it'd made the whole world feel larger and smaller all at once, still and warm and wrapped around them, and at the same time spinning off into far-flung clots of stars and endless space. Only a moment, a handful of seconds, and then just as Sherlock took a step toward him, something new and unreadable on his face, an expression John had never seen before, the sound of Greg's half-jog breathing and many feet rustling through the grass broke in on them. A rustling- Breathing-

It's suddenly both less _and_ more quiet in the room; impossible, yet true, so there you are. Or rather, there Sherlock is.

Stock-still in the doorway. Face as blood-drained as any corpse's. Hands frozen mid glove-pull. 

Even the deadly silence in war zones isn't this alarming. Seconds, not even a handful, before something irrevocable happens, he can see it rising in Sherlock's eyes: There's going to be a brisk heel turn and the sound of the front door and then a chilly letter and Mrs Hudson wringing her hands as John loads his boxes into a taxi. He'd do it, he really would, the impossible berk. Wreck both their lives just to save face.

John has perhaps three seconds to rescue them. He knows he can cross the room in two. 

 

One second's enough to land a kiss, yeah?

~


End file.
